Sorry I was away for so long. I had surgery for a hernia and have been on my back most of the week. Anyway, long story short, I read most of the comments and saw where you and that other fellow got a bit heated. I'd like to just stick with our conversation on the issue before all that if that's alright.
Dr.Disaster wrote:
"Those games" felt more polished/balanced because they had less to offer than you recall.
Not really. I'd say dungeon-wise, they were proportionally about the same - GR2 having the slight edge here with more play-time - however the length of one game does not make the experience more fun so much as well-polished content with intuitive and enjoyable GUI and controls/mechanics. Just because LG2 is longer than some of those other titles I listed does not make it a superior game in any regards. What did GGG add to the table over LG1? Firearms, new monsters, underwater and better modding features; alchemy was already a features of LG1 and there are the same amount of spells in LG2 as there were in LG1, with the same minimal weapon and armor variety. So, taking this from a gamers point of view, they added in one BROKEN mechanic with firearms and undermined some other features I found enjoyable in LG1 with the trade-off being more monsters and underwater areas to explore, so unless I'm missing something, LG2 is worse than those other titles:
Dr.Disaster wrote:
- Firearms: not there
- Special attacks: either done automatic (LoG1), selected like regular attacks with growing cooldowns (DM) or not there (EoB)
- Charged items: i agree they should cost a lot less energy but that's it
- Cooldowns: no difference; check your reference DM for it's cooldowns: they get longer and longer with more powerful attacks
- Spell damage: no difference; in LoG2 the magic skill levels are similar to DM power runes; damage cap in DM was the Mon rune
RE: Firearms... everyone agrees... you, me, everyone... that they need modification. I see Anti posted in this thread twice, yet didn't bother comment on this. Not unexpected. Shows to me their [GGG's] main interest is of course the bottom-line this time around, same as it was with LG1, meaning they will fix it in LG3 but not LG2. I'm sorry, but to me that's just sloppy modding that I can't respect - fix up the old game for the fans then move on!
RE: Special attacks/Cool-downs... You are correct that I haven't made it very far into this game yet. I was under the impression from some when I made this comment that some special attacks require over two seconds to activate. In DM and Ishar: Legend of Fortress, your one single toon had his attack icons greyed out as he recovered from his special attack and the better the special attack, the longer the cool down, but there wasn't also a "warm-up" period. The point here is if these rumors are true of 2-3 second special attack warm-ups, that seems quite off to me because I know with a min/maxer party with dex-based attackers up front and bomb throwers in the rear, you could get off a good 2-4 attacks per second, so in 3-seconds time the DPS you'd be missing out on comparatively to a single special attack would obviously overshadow the special attack completely. However I cannot speak on this from experience at all, so I'd rather not make any more comments on it until I see some of these special attacks with long warm-up periods myself. But seriously, the concept of a warm-up seems redundant when you already suffer a cool-down - that and I don't like the idea of tying up my mouse click for that long when I could be quaffing a healing potion or doing other things in that time. Do way with warm-ups I say and just increase the cool-down to balance out! Oh, and regarding cool-downs, I don't think I ever complained about them before since I've always viewed the cool-down as a necessary staple of all RPG mechanics used to balance skills, so I'm not sure where our wires got crossed on that one.
RE: Charged items... we agree
RE: Spell damage... to me, it's not so much the damage itself that needs tweaking from what I understand, but I prefer the dmg tied to a stat to give it more variety in its damage output and less static. When spells are consistently doing the same damage based on how many points are in their level and the spell level is already maxed out, the motivation to keep playing is diminished and on top of that, I feel like I'm playing Super Smash Bros where everyone does the same damage all the time. I say, find a way to tie in Willpower attribute points to damage like it was with GR1, like how melee and thrown weapons, and missile work with Strength and Dexterity respectively. From your comments, I'm lead to believe you think I was complaining about the system itself, which I don't remember specifically mentioning in my balance issue post. To be perfectly honest, I much preferred the spell system in Dungeon Master over any other game like this I've played; LG2's system seems to cartoonish to me, like I'm playing on a child's LEAPFROG educational iPad connecting dots to "make stuff happen".
***FINAL COMMENTS: And the rapier not being dex based is ridiculous! Have you ever used one IRL? They are used for fencing, which requires finesse and guile over brute strength. Minor nit really. -EDIT: I'll retract this comment due to learning something new about era-specific rapiers I wasn't aware of while making this statement.